1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and information processing method for laying out a plurality of drawing data elements contained in a document in one or more pages.
2. Description of the Related Art
During the creation of a document of a plurality of pages using an information processing apparatus, a user may instruct the information processing apparatus to print the document to check the content of the printed output in some cases. In such cases, the printed output may have a page that contains a large blank area. Printing such a page leads to wasting sheets.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-94777 describes, in printing a document that has a large blank area, reducing the large blank area. More specifically, an information processing apparatus described in this patent document converts a plurality of image data elements into images and rearranges them in a single sheet to save printing sheets.
In printing color drawing data (image data), the amount of consumption of ink or toner is large.
To reduce the consumption, in printing a page that would require a considerable amount of ink or toner consumption, a user can explicitly assigns monochrome printing, instead of color printing.
One specific example of the above-described technique is described below with reference to FIGS. 15A to 15C. FIGS. 15A to 15C illustrate how ink or toner consumption is reduced by a change in print setting in printing a document that contains both color and monochrome drawing data elements. In the drawings, darkly shaded drawing data elements 1501 and 1503 represent monochrome data, whereas drawing data elements 1502 and 1504 represent color data. The print setting for each drawing data element is indicated below each page in FIGS. 15A to 15C.
In the print setting, “automatic” represents the setting in which print data in a page determined as including the color property is output in color mode and print data in a page determined as having only the monochrome property is output in monochrome mode. “Monochrome assigned” is the setting in which print data is output in monochrome mode even if the print data is color data.
As illustrated in FIG. 15B, for example, when a user changes the print setting for the drawing data element 1502 in the second page from “automatic” to “monochrome assigned,” toner or ink for use in color mode can be saved. Similarly, when a user changes the print setting for the drawing data element 1504 in the fourth page from “automatic” to “monochrome assigned,” toner or ink for use in color mode can be saved.
In this way, with the above-described known technique, toner or ink can be saved by a change from color drawing data to monochrome drawing data in the print setting, and printing sheets can be saved by a decrease in a blank area in a document.
The possibility of achieving an intended color output while reducing waste of printing by using a combination of the change and the decrease is discussed below.
When the technique described in the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-94777 is applied to the document illustrated in FIG. 15A, a resultant output is illustrated in FIG. 15C. More specifically, the information processing apparatus lays out the color data element 1502 at the second page in a blank area in the first page and lays out the color data element 1504 at the fourth page in a blank area in the third page. That is, the information processing apparatus can save printing sheets corresponding to two pages by positioning image data in a blank area.
However, in the example illustrated in FIG. 15C, because the color data elements 1502 and 1504 are laid out in the first and third pages, respectively, in which “automatic” is set as the print setting, the printing mode is changed to color mode. Accordingly, the drawing data elements 1501 to 1504 are output in color mode, so there is a problem in which toner or ink cannot be saved.